Thoughts on Season Four.

SOME THOUGHTS ON SEASON FOUR

Enterprise's journey comes to an end. So how does its final season stack up?


STAR TREK: "THE PREQUEL"

More than any other season, Season Four of Enterprise actively presents itself as a prequel to Star Trek in general, and the original series in specific. Almost every story of the season ties in with something from the original series. At its best, the season fills in some interesting holes in the fabric of the Star Trek universe. The father of Data's creator (Brent Spiner) is tied together with the augments. The differences between Vulcan society in Enterprise and in the rest of Trek is explained, while tying those differences to the Romulans.  The Romulans are a constant background presence, and we see the beginnings of the buildup to the Romulan war. When it works - which is most of the time - the strong ties to the rest of the franchise create a more cohesive Trek universe, while also creating some highly dramatic stories.

When it doesn't work, mind you, it can feel like desperate fan service. Bound, for example, is a poor episode, and evoking TOS in its style while invoking the Orion slave girls does not make it one bit better. In fact, I suspect a better ship-bound cheapie could have been devised just using the many pieces of the Enterprise universe that have been established over the first three seasons. The Klingon 2-parter is much more enjoyable, and tying the Klingon continuity issues to the Augment arc is an interesting idea. But a part of me simply cannot fully buy into a need to tell a story whose main purpose is to explain variations in Klingon make-up.


STORY-ARCS

Most of this season is divided into story-arcs, a mix of 2-parters and 3-parters. Only a very small number of episodes are standalones. Even one of these, Home, isn't really an episode that stands on its own, as it effectively acts as a prologue to both the Vulcan 3-parter and the Terra Prime 2-parter.

There is much that is good about the long-form storytelling this season opts for. The longer stories allow for more complex stories and for some nice character scenes. Moments such as Reed and Mayweather dealing with a bomb in the ruins of the Earth Embassy on Vulcan simply would not fit into a strict 45-minute story... but there's plenty of room for such a character beat in a 130-minute story.  In addition, by limiting the arcs to two to three episodes each, the main pitfall of the season-long Xindi arc is avoided.  The arcs are long enough to allow for development, but contained enough that getting from beginning to end doesn't feel daunting.

The multi-part stories also allow the show to stretch the budget further. Season Four had a reduced budget, but it largely doesn't show. The Augment arc, the Vulcan arc, and the mirror universe 2-parter feature some of the strongest visuals of the entire series. This does come at a price, in the form of cheap standalones but it's a fair trade-off.

Not everything about the "mini-arc" structure works. The writers have difficulty resolving the 3-part arcs in particular. In every case, the final episode ends up being the weakest. The only one that's significantly "off" is The Aenar, which feels hopelessly rushed and only thinly-connected to the preceding episodes. As I noted in my review, The Aenar really should have been its own 2-parter. But even the season's best arc, the Vulcan story, has a final episode that feels too simplistic after the complexity of the first two parts.


"ALL ARCHER, ALL THE TIME"

Overall, Season Four is a very good season - but with one significant irritant. That irritant's name is Jonathan Archer. I quite liked the characterization of Archer across the first three seasons. He was a basically decent man, but one who vied with some deep character flaws. The Xindi arc saw Archer pushed to his limit, hammered relentlessly over the course of a full season, and that brought out the most interesting facets of both the character and Scott Bakula's performance.

For all three preceding seasons, there was always a balance. Archer was the lead, but he didn't dominate every episode. In this season, that balance disappears almost entirely. Season Four of Star Trek: Enterprise often feels like "The Jonathan Archer Show," which does neither the series nor the character any favors.

Couldn't some of Archer's material have been farmed out to other characters? I can certainly think of one example: As the ship's security chief, it would have made more sense for Reed to have escorted Dr. Soong to the slave auction than Archer. And for three seasons (and the first few episodes of this season), I really liked Archer - so I can only imagine how viewers already sick of him must have reacted!


SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

One advantage of the mini-arc structure is that, even with the show OD'ing on Archer, there's still a decent amount of material left for the supporting cast. The relationship between Trip and T'Pol runs as a sort of constant "B" plot. I do think that Trip's time away from Enterprise was a wasted opportunity, with him rejoining the ship a mere one episode after leaving it... but with the series clearly coming to a close, some rushed elements were probably unavoidable.

In addition to the "Big Three," there's at least a few decent moments sprinkled through the season for everybody. John Billingsley continues to make the most of every moment he gets as Phlox. He gets a substantial amount of focus in the Klingon arc, and he also gets some wonderful scenes as "evil Phlox" during In a Mirror Darkly. Phlox and Hoshi have some good scenes in Home as well as at the start of the Klingon arc, and it might have been interesting to have seen their friendship/potential developing relationship had the series continued.

Hoshi and Mayweather, the series' two most perpetually underused characters, get some strong material in the mirror universe 2-parter. Linda Park, in particular, has a field day with In a Mirror Darkly. Park and Anthony Montgomery also get some strong material in Observer Effect, the only of this year's shipbound standalones that actually works as an episode. Reed gets a steady supporting role across the season, too, particularly when his background with his shadowy old section comes into play in the Klingon arc and the final 2-parter. The season leaves Reed owing his former employers in a big way, something which would likely have been followed up if only the series had survived.


CANCELLED AT THE WRONG TIME

"If only the series had survived" is a running theme in my thoughts on Season Four. Usually, I think that three to four seasons is a perfectly healthy run for a show. But Enterprise was very much in the process of reinventing itself, and was doing so in some interesting ways. With a new showrunner in Manny Coto and a new focus on being a true Trek prequel, this feels almost like the first season of a new show.

A lot of the season lays groundwork for events that would doubtless have paid off in future seasons.  I suspect the series would have continued to build up the Romulans as a threat, and that Starfleet would have gradually become aware of them as such, all on the way to the eventual Romulan War. The season ends with a 2-parter that sees the beginning steps toward a Federation, a movement made with some considerable resistance from elements of humanity. Again, I suspect future seasons would have seen more problems in getting different worlds to really work together as one, and that might have been the basis for some excellent stories.

Watching Season Four, I come to one inescapable conclusion. Enterprise was a series that was cancelled at the exact wrong time.


OVERALL

Some weak final episodes to some of the arcs and the overuse (and misuse) of Archer lead me to not quite liking this season as much as I did Season Three. It's still a very strong season of Star Trek, though, and probably the only season of this show to truly make use of the concept of the series as a prequel.

Some of Enterprise's best moments occur during this season. Also, as with Season Three, it actually achieves a reasonable balance of the non-Archer regulars, with everyone getting something to do. Most of all, there is the sense that important things (within the Trek universe, at least) are happening before your eyes - a sense that wasn't necessarily there in earlier seasons.

Despite a few flaws and a misjudged series finale, a good finish to a series I generally enjoyed a lot more than its reputation would have led me to expect. It's just a shame it didn't get one more season to deliver on some of the seeds planted here.

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Thoughts on Season Three.

Season Three is a huge improvement over Enterprise's second season in almost every way imaginable. Not everything works, but enough does to provide not only the best season of Enterprise, but one of the very best Trek seasons I've reviewed to date.


CHARACTERS

Most of the episodes still center on Archer, Trip, and T'Pol - which is fair enough, since they are the leads. But the supporting cast are no longer "characters in boxes," used for a single episode here or there and otherwise ignored. We get good scenes sprinkled throughout the season between Reed and Hoshi, Reed and Archer, Hoshi and Mayweather, Hoshi and Archer, Phlox and anyone he's on-screen with... in short, they are once again interacting as a crew. The actors' performances improve accordingly.

Season Three takes a darker direction than earlier seasons, which particularly benefits Scott Bakula's performance. He's always been at his best when playing Archer's anger. This season starts with Archer responding to that anger and to the responsibility thrust upon him. As Archer makes multiple hard and ruthless decisions for the sake of the mission, a sort of grim determination settles over him. He's not necessarily angry anymore. But he's not the same man he was. This is a good, and interesting, thing, and Bakula is terrific in almost every episode.

In my Season Three wishlist, I expressed hope that we would get some strong recurring characters this season. In Degra, the season delivers one of the best non-regular characters since the glory days of DS9. Degra is a complex character, who is taken on a very believable journey over the course of the season. His evolving friendship with Archer is well-scripted and well-played by both actors, and both actor Randy Oglesby and the writers deserve praise for how well this character works.

The MACO's, however, represent possibly the season's biggest missed opportunity. We are given a group of soldiers, used to a tightly disciplined command structure, now thrust into an unfamiliar environment among a close-knit crew. They're outsiders. It would have been interesting to have seen some episodes devoted to them finding their place within this structure.  Instead, they are mostly relegated to the status of cannon fodder. The only one the writers even attempt to characterize is Major Hayes. But Hayes is only in a handful of episodes, so he never feels like a part of the crew. He's characterized in broad cliches, and dies a broadly cliched death, right down to heroic words on his deathbed. This has all the impact of the burning of a wooden mannequin.


SEASON STRUCTURE

The season-long arc is well-structured. The first third of the season sets the stage, introducing the major concepts: The Xindi Council, the Anomalies, the Spheres, the Weapon, and the potential for Archer to make alliances. We end that movement with Twilight, which hammers home what is at stake by showing us a future in which the mission fails. Then, realizing that a full season of nothing but arc stories will exhaust viewers, the writers give us some standalone episodes. North Star and Carpenter Street are far from great, but they are enjoyable as a change of pace. Meanwhile, Similitude and Chosen Realm are genuinely good episodes that show that independent Trek stories can work in this new setting.

The last act of the show begins with the arrival at Azati Prime, and from that moment on the momentum builds to a very high pitch. The two linked 3-parters - Azati Prime/Damage/The Forgotten and The Council/Countdown/Zero Hour - are well executed, edge-of-your-seat stuff. These episodes showcase the advantages of a building arc. Because of the 17 episodes that went before, these episodes get to simply pull triggers. The results are explosive, with some of the best action and special effects set pieces I have seen on television.  Best still, the action comes without losing sight of the regulars' characterization.


SEASON FOUR WISH LIST

So... Season Four. Enterprise's final season, and the final season of televised Trek to date. What would I like to see from it? Well, first off, I hope that the characters are not reset to their Season 1 & 2 selves. They've been through a lot, and done a lot that should have permanently changed them. Archer, in particular, should not be able to fully come back from the hard pragmatism he's been forced to exercise. If Archer's back to whimpering about his dog while threatening to pee on annoying aliens' sacred trees, I'm going to be very irritated with the writers.

I also hope the storytelling doesn't fully return to standalone episodes. I don't want another season-long arc; that would be exhausting. But I do hope the stories feed on each other a bit more than was the case in Seasons One and Two, with individual stories building into something more. I also hope we return to some of the more interesting arcs of the first two seasons. Many hints were dropped about the Vulcans having their own agenda early in the series. The Vulcan/Andorian relations were  one of the more interesting facets of hte first two seasons. Then there's the matter of the Suliban, who were all but forgotten after Shockwave. The setting of Season Three necessitated dropping these elements. But now I'd like to see them returned, and hopefully even resolved.

Mostly I'd just like some good, solid storytelling, with a crew that works together and interacts. Season Three has shown that Trek can work as a "modern" science fiction series. Let Season Four show it continue to do so, in a different way.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the much-hated finale, if only to see if it's half as bad as its reputation suggests.

 

 

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Thoughts on Season Two

PREVIOUSLY, ON ENTERPRISE...

Back when I wrote up my Season One overview, I observed my pleasant surprise at how good much of the series was. It had its flaws, notably an overabundance of generic "filler" episodes and a regular character (Mayweather) who just didn't work. But all the non-Mayweather characters worked, and the first season did a suprisingly decent job of juggling a large ensemble so that each of the non-Mayweather characters got an opportunity to shine and to interact with each other. At the same time, potential was created to explore several arcs and to allow the humans to create a genuine place for themselves in an interstellar community.

It wasn't a brilliant first season, but it was a promising one. At the time, I wrote that it had gone through its shakedown run, done its job in showing that the series had potential, and that what was needed now was for it to raise its game in Season Two.


Well, if the mission was for the series to raise its game for its sophomore season... It failed. Utterly.


CHARACTERS, STAY IN YOUR BOXES!

In every significant respect, Season Two is much worse than Season One. The steps it takes don't advance the series or characters much, and in some cases even undermine development that had already occurred.

Nowhere is this more apparent than by looking at the characters. Prior to the season finale, there is only minimal development of the characters of Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, and no development of any of the supporting characters. Archer shows some progress in dealing with alien species, being less rash and judgmental than in Season One. But that was a direction he was already taking by the end of Season One, and nothing new is added to that until Cogenitor - very late in the season. Trip gets a lot of episodes (too many) around the midseason. But rather than advance his character, these episodes just try to let themselves be carried by his easygoing and likable persona. Nothing new is added to Trip's character until (again) Cogenitor. It's all just coasting.

The supporting cast is treated even worse. In the first season, every character worked except for Mayweather, and every character got a chance to interact with the others. In this season, the characters are all kept in boxes. We no longer see Hoshi practicing her linguistics skills in the mess with Phlox or T'Pol, and gone is the development of a mentor relationship between her and T'Pol, with T'Pol teaching her to control her anxieties. In fact, the two get almost no interaction at all. That Hoshi comes across more strongly than Mayweather is entirely down to Linda Park's performance, as she takes every small moment she's given and does as much with it as possible. In terms of scripting, she's in the same, "Don't use until Christmas" box that Mayweather is kept in.

Reed is not treated much better. After an excellent episode in Minefield, he is mostly sidelined and given no interaction with anyone except for Trip. No Reed/Hoshi, Reed/Phlox, or Reed/random crewmember interactions. For that matter, even the Big Three mostly just interact with each other and sometimes Phlox. They're all kept in their boxes. The creators may open up and play with the Archer, T'Pol, and Trip dolls more often than the others, but there is relatively little sense of them being a cohesive crew - something which was not a problem during Season One!

 

I can only sit here and wonder what happened, that the promising interactions among the regulars have all but ceased in the show's second season, leaving all of the characters flatter as a result.


DIET STORYTELLING: NOW WITH 60% LESS DRAMA!

The season actually starts out promisingly. Shockwave 2 isn't as good as Part One was, but it's still good - and honestly, it's very rare to find a Part 2 of anything that's as good as Part One. Most of the first disc of the DVD set consists of good episodes, and that continues into the second disc. The Minefield/Dead Stop pairing works particularly well, with one episode leading directly into the next, and with good character scenes and good scripts marking both stories.

 

Then it takes a wrong turn. The entire middle portion of the season is made up of one generic standalone episode after another. A few of these are good episodes, and only a couple of episodes are actively bad.  But there are no standouts, and the overall flood of "OK, but ordinary" shows becomes downright soul-sucking after a while. During that midseason patch, it becomes work to move on to the next episode.

Perhaps criticisms from the Continuity Police over Vulcans with their own agendas and too much time-travel scared the writers and producers away from the potentially interesting plot arcs of the Temporal Cold War and the Vulcan/human relations. Instead, we got served a half-season of pap. Nothing in it to make the Continuity Police complain, but nothing in it to make anyone particularly interested in watching more of it either.

LATE IMPROVEMENT

Ironically, the episode that sees things pick up again is probably Stigma, which returns us to the idea of a Vulcan society that has its own agenda, isn't always benevolent, and has become less tolerant of dissenting views than had once been the case. The irony here is that this is the episode that gives T'Pol "Vulcan AIDS" - which should forever change her relationship with the High Command. Instead, T'Pol and her Vulcan AIDS are never even mentioned again, not even in passing by Dr. Phlox, and certainly not by Soval who she meets up with again in the very next episode! I'm not saying that T'Pol should henceforth be defined by her mindmelding disease. But surely it should create repercussions in her relationship with the High Command, and not just be completely forgotten about for the remainder of the season?

Despite that, the episode is a good one, and one which returns Enterprise to its major plot arcs: the Vulcans, the Temporal Cold War, and the Klingons. From here, there are several good episodes, some of them very good. Despite a blip with the wretched Bounty, the season ends with a run of fairly high quality shows. Even without the season finale changing the series' focus, the lift in quality would have made me more optimistic about Season Three. With that change, I find myself actively looking forward to the new season.

The finale is excellent, one of only three great episodes in the season. I like the way the Temporal Cold War is worked into this shift, with Silik being the one to bring the message about the Xindi to Archer. The lead Archer is following comes from an unreliable source. Are the Xindi actually responsible, or is Silik working another agenda? Even if Silik is passing along good information, what price will he exact for helping Archer? And what ramifications might there be for Archer's space battle with the Klingons?


LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE

OK, wish list for Season Three. My Season Two wish list went almost entirely unfulfilled, but I live in hope. For Season Three, I would like to see this change of direction embraced. No easy fixes to the dilemma created in The Expanse. Let the story run a good half-season, even a full season. They have gone into a region of space even the Vulcans and Klingons are afraid of. There is no excuse now not to present some truly alien settings and situations. So DROP THE GENERIC RUNAROUNDS!

 

I do want to see Archer and Trip continuing to feel their anger, and to be a bit more willing to use force. But I don't want "force" to be their default, and where it is their default response I want it to blow up in their faces at least once. I want Archer to have to use his mind, not his ship's upgraded weapons systems, to resolve this situation. We saw that probe in the precredit sequence, right? I don't care if Enterprise now has "photonic torpedoes," they are clearly technologically outclassed. Let that be the default situation - a small fish in a big pond, with the crew having to make allies inside the Expanse in order to survive.

Beyond that, I want to see a return to Season One in terms of character interaction. Let us see Archer, Trip, and T'Pol interacting with the supporting cast, and not just in those cast members' spotlight episodes. Hoshi is a potentially very good character, played by a good actress, who has been inexplicably sidelined.  Do something with her!  And do something new with Mayweather, too. He can't be saving space freighters from pirates within The Expanse, so his spotlight episode will have to have a new plot now, right?

 

It also might be a good idea to introduce some recurring characters among the crew. Season One got a boost from Cutler, even if the actress did leave for another series (and then died young sometime later). Create some new recurring characters, maybe even let us see an episode or two from the viewpoint of one of the average, non-command staff crew members. It's hardly a revolutionary concept for an episode, but it might allow us to see new facets of our regulars.

Most of all, I hope Season Three is as much of an improvement as I've heard is the case. The first season was competent but only occasionally more than that, which made it important for Season Two to be better. Instead, Season Two was much worse than Season One.  I'm not surprised that viewers jumped ship and mostly never came back. I suspect the show had already passed its point of no return with mainstream viewers, and only got two additional seasons because of the Star Trek label.

 

But I don't care about ratings, and I don't even care that much about a long run. The show has two seasons left. It would be very nice if they were two seasons of good television, and not more generic pap.

 

 

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Thoughts on Season One

I started watching Enterprise with trepidation. This was Trek's "franchise killer," after all. Hardcore Trek fans - many of them, at least - cite this as the worst of the franchise, worse even than Voyager, and still regard Rick Berman and (to a lesser extent) Brannon Braga as Trek anti-Christs. Go to IMDB, and you can find a thread under Rick Berman's name wishing him a Happy Birthday... with posters down the thread telling him to go throw himself in front of a truck, among even less pleasant posts.

Given how quickly I abandoned Voyager on its initial airing, I Netflix'd Disc One with a sense of morbid curiosity. "I wonder how bad this is?"

Imagine my surprise to find a generally well-structured, well-acted pilot, followed by a pair of flawed, but generally interesting standalones. Discs Two and Three came along and presented more varied quality, with a few dire episodes (Terra Nova, Fortunate Son), and mediocre runarounds (Unexpected, Civilization), alternating with far stronger fare.  The good was very good... but some of the bad was truly dire, and it wasn't until Dear Doctor truly delivered on the potential of the series with a thoughtful, controversial episode that simply would not fit any other Trek series' format that I finally decided that yes, I would stay on board for the full series.

By this point, I am no longer Netflixing Enterprise, but have instead purchased the full series set. It has become my second-favorite Trek spinoff, behind Deep Space Nine.  I'm trying very hard to keep myself unspoiled for the remainder of this series, and I look forward to experiencing each episode as something totally new to me.


Good Characters vs. Weak Filler:

I like the characters. I like Archer's headstrong nature, and I like that he sometimes behaves stupidly and sometimes does the wrong thing. I like the evolving friendship between Archer and T'Pol, and the tentative friendship/potential romance(?) between T'Pol and Trip. I like Malcolm Reed and his obsession with making things go "boom!" I like Hoshi and her enthusiasm for new languages and cultures - clashing harshly with her fear (rather refreshing, in a Trek show) of not only perilous situations, but the judgment of others and even of cramped spaces. I like Dr. Phlox, a character who had the potential to be stupid comic relief, but in John Billingsley's hands has become equal parts wise and creepy, cheerful to the point of mania, and alien to a degree where he often seems less emotional than T'Pol. You could shove Mayweather out of an airlock, and it would likely be weeks (or months) before I'd even notice he was gone... but that's a better track record on characters than most Trek spinoffs have managed.

I don't like the series' tendency to fall back on formula Trek "filler episodes" to pad out its episode count. Episodes such as Terra Nova, Civilization, Rogue Planet, and the like could easily come from any Trek series, and only serve to diminish this series' own sense of identity. I suspect I'm right about why these episodes exist.  When you have to make 25 episodes a season, you fall back on formula filler shows to stretch the episode count.  Speaking just for myself, I'd rather have shorter seasons without this filler. I much prefer seeing the characters struggle with an uncertain technological place in the universe, or watching them embark on fairly routine missions (Strange New World, Breaking the Ice) and finding themselves overcome with awe at the wonder of just being in space. When I see Archer playing Kirk - or worse, Picard - it just doesn't fit.


Season Two Wishlist:

So on to what I'd like to see in Season Two.  I'd like more genuine exploration. More episodes in which they find themselves in truly alien situations (ala Vox Sola), and have to think their way out. More situations with the humans finding themselves technologically outclassed by other races. And yes, I'm still waiting for Archer to make not only a mistake, but a truly disastrous misstep. This series' format demands Archer innocently stick his foot in and do something catastrophic... and no, Shockwave doesn't count; Archer needs to actually be at fault. Of course, I'd like more on the Temporal Cold War as well, though Season One extras make it clear that this was evidently a network stipulation, with Braga seeming mystified that in a show set more than 100 years in the future, the network still demanded something "futuristic" within the concept.


Overall:

Season One, at its best, shows a lot of potential for Enterprise. Right now, only occasional episodes live up to that potential, but it scrapes it often enough for me to rate this as a pretty good first season overall. Certainly, it compares quite favorably to the first season of Next Generation.  Showing potential is really all it needed to do in Year One. It's had its shakedown year, to figure out what worked and what didn't (*cough* Mayweather *cough*). Now it needs to raise the bar and start realizing that potential on a more consistent basis.


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